Tony McMichael, medical graduate and epidemiologist, was previously Professor of Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK (1994-2001). He currently holds an Australia Fellowship (2007-2012) from the National Health and Medical Research Council, is Honorary Professor in Climate Change and Human Health at the University of Copenhagen, and Honorary Fellow, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. During 2008-09 he was President of the International Society of Environmental Epidemiology. Professor McMichael’s primary research focus is on global climate change, environmental conditions and human health – with studies at local, national and international levels. His early research and writing on the health risks of climate change, in the 1990s, led on to his role in health risk assessment for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 1993-2007). During 2001-07, as Director of NCEPH, he developed research programs on the health impacts of large-scale environmental and climatic changes, environmental influences on autoimmune diseases, and relationships between urban environments, human ecology and health. His team’s program on climate change and health is one of the largest and most internationally active in the world. He has been an advisor on environmental health issues to WHO (with whom he works closely on climate change), the UN Environment Program, the World Bank, the Tropical Diseases Research Program (TDR) and other international bodies. His interests in environmental, social, cultural and evolutionary influences on disease patterns underpin a further research involvement in relation to emerging infectious diseases, in this 'renaissant' microbial era.
